noel alanguilan

a couple of years ago one of my hard disks crashed. it wasn’t a major crash but i lost a good number of files nonetheless. i do have backups but since then i have tried to offload most of my files from my desktop and/or laptop to the internet.

at the time, one of my fast growing files was my e-mail. i used outlook express and it fit my needs then. but as more mail slowly crept in i realized that i was hitting outlook express’ limits and the space being occupied by my mail was getting uncomfortably bigger.

so i decided, off with the pop mail and go with web-based e-mail. there are definite advantages to this move:

pluses

• i can access my mail from anywhere and on any computer with an internet connection.
• i would think that all my mails would occupy approximately 3 gigabytes of space. maybe 4. i get plenty of pictures, videos and documents and i do not delete them. that’s a lot of space for just e-mails and none of that is occupying space in my local system. outlook’s (not the express version’s) default capacity is 2 gigabytes.
• should my local hard drives or system fail my e-mail data is still safe and i can still access them.
• should i refresh or change my system i do not have to worry about restoring my mail setup and files from backup.

minuses

• no internet. no e-mail. i will not be able to access even the one’s that i’ve read already.
• security is dependent on the service provider and strength of the password. so i use several passphrases and rotate them regularly and i got (i think) a pretty good webmail service provider — yahoo!

i would think that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages. if you want more info on service providers there is a comparison of webmail providers from the wiki.

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